Websites show you ads based on other sites you visited. Now, online radio stations will start playing you songs based on the same information.

While marketers have long targeted online radio listeners baed on their zip code or gender, this type of interest-based targeting is new. The ad options, which are the result of a deal between radio service Triton Digital and data provider eXelate, mean radio ads are about to get a lot more specific.

According to eXelate CEO, Mark Zagorski, radio is the “last bastion of context based advertising” but that this will change quickly due to online radio’s growing popularity and the capacity of behavioral-based advertising to scale quickly.

The new interest-based ads will help brands reach users of Pandora, which makes up about 74% of the online radio market, but also the web streams of more traditional radio stations as well.

Spotify is expanding the beta test of its self-serve advertising platform. After an initial launch in the United States in September, the streaming music company is opening the beta trial of Spotify Ad Studio to Canada and the UK. Some partners in those markets have already been trying the system in a closed beta, but now any interested parties in the UK and Canada can sign on for the public beta.

Spotify Ad Studio offers targeting by traditional demographics such as age and location as well as by musical mood or genre. That allows brands to craft different messages for a listener tuned into mellow rock or intense R&B.

Now Spotify listens to you instead of the other way around. Spotify has a new voice search interface that lets you say “Play my Discover Weekly,” “Show Calvin Harris” or “Play some upbeat pop” to pull up music.

A Spotify spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that this is “Just a test for now,” as only a small subset of users have access currently, but the company noted there would be more details to share later. The test was first spotted by Hunter Owens. Thanks to him we have a video demo of the feature below that shows pretty solid speech recognition and the ability to access music several different ways.

Voice control could make Spotify easier to use while on the go using microphone headphones or in the house if you’re not holding your phone. It might also help users paralyzed by the infinite choices posed by the Spotify search box by letting them simply call out a genre or some other category of songs. Spotify briefly tested but never rolled out a very rough design of “driving mode” controls a year ago. [Update: TechCrunch reader Ishan Agrawal dug into the Spotify Android APK, and discovered that there are separate files for driving and voice search modes, indicating that the new voice interface isn’t just an iteration on driving mode.]

Music streaming services can be frustrating if you're an avid listener, since your definitions may not line up with theirs. They may lump trance, techno and drum-and-bass into a generic "dance" category, for instance. Spotify, at least, knows it needs to do better... and it's asking you for help. It quietly launched a Line-In feature that lets you suggest edits to the metadata for artists, albums and songs. You can recommend genres, tags, moods and even nicknames. You could clarify that an "electronica" album is really tech house, or remind Spotify that many people refer to Metallica's self-titled record as "the Black Album."

Ebiquity identified what advertisers and agencies consider to be the most important attributes when building a brand. They then evaluated how each medium performs against those attributes. The five most important media attributes for growing a brand in the longer term are:

targeting the right people in the right place at the right timeincreasing campaign ROItriggering a positive emotional responseincreasing brand saliencemaximising campaign reach.Judged against these, TV and radio are top overall. Combining evidence scores from all 12 attributes firmly places TV as the best performing medium, followed by radio, newspapers, magazines and out of home. Online display is the weakest performer.

With the exception of TV, advertisers undervalue traditional media, especially radio. They overrate the value of online video and paid social.

There is a clear disconnect between the scale of investment in online media and the value it delivers. Re-evaluating the media mix may help advertisers better achieve long-term brand growth.

Caliphate,” A Documentary Mini-Series Debuting This Spring, Is The Times’s Most Ambitious Form of Audio Storytelling To Date

NEW YORK, March 10, 2018 -- The New York Times today announced the upcoming launch of its first narrative nonfiction podcast, “Caliphate” with Rukmini Callimachi, an award-winning Times foreign correspondent and one of the foremost experts on the Islamic State. The announcement was made during the SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin, Tex.

New episodes will be released later this spring. In a first for Times audio, our subscribers will get early access to the series.

Throughout each episode of “Caliphate,” listeners will join Callimachi for a high-wire international reporting project to find answers to the world’s most pressing questions about ISIS, featuring interviews that only a reporter like Callimachi can secure.

Recorded and produced over the past year, “Caliphate” follows Callimachi as she searches building after building in the city of Mosul, collecting thousands of pages of secret papers from al-Qaeda’s North African branch, showing how they governed and answering the disturbing question of their longevity.

Through in-depth reporting, “Caliphate” tells the surprising and emotional story of the pull of this group, how it functions and how it continues to win over support, despite the immense suffering it caused."

“‘Caliphate’ represents the modern New York Times," said Sam Dolnick, an assistant managing editor. "It's ambitious, rigorous, hard-nosed reporting combined with first-rate digital storytelling. We're taking our audience to dangerous places they have never been, and we're doing it with more transparency than we ever have before."

“One year after launching ‘The Daily,’ we are expanding to take on narratives so complex and important that they demand a different form of audio storytelling,” added Lisa Tobin, The Times’s executive producer for audio. “Where better to start than the story of the Islamic State, and with Rukmini Callimachi as our guide and narrator. We are striving to be as ambitious in pushing the boundaries of podcasting as our colleagues are in their reporting.”

“Caliphate” joins The Times’s roster of dynamic audio, including “The Daily” and “Still Processing,” which have redefined the sound of The New York Times and introduced its journalism to a broad new audience.

How smart speakers, podcasts, and a massive pivot to voice will revolutionize how we navigate the world.

Voice is the primordial human medium. Newborns recognize their mother’s voice the moment they’re born, having heard a muffled version of it in utero. In extremis, we scream or cry for help or joy. Even our most abstractly textual or computerized communications are framed as “conversations,” mimicking the kind of face-to-face dialogue—rich with body language, subtext, emotional warmth, and innuendo—whose increasing absence has spawned a hundred virtual substitutes. And now that our digital platforms are finally sophisticated enough to turn vocal interactions—listening and/or speaking—into yet another Internet-scale, monetizable platform, voice could soon emerge as one of the most important content and commerce platforms in the world.

I used to think that podcasts were a nimble, cheap, democratic alternative to radio. And maybe, once upon a time, they were. But those days are over. Podcasting has become industrialized, in quite an exciting way. It’s shaping the future of audio-only storytelling, the future of radio—and, possibly, even the future of narrative nonfiction more broadly.

Would you like a quick overview of what smart speakers and broader voice assistant adoption means for brands? My 20-minute keynote at the Smart Voice Summit, Paris in February 2018 (organized by Smartly.ai) reviews what the data say about smart speaker and voice assistant adoption, why its happening now and how brands are reacting.

Voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Google Assistant and Microsoft Cortana collectively reach several hundred million consumers each month. These voice portals have become an important channel for consumer brands and there are seven different ways that brands are responding. Click the image below or here to watch the full presentation.

Armed with the ability to target ads to voice-activated devices, more than two-thirds (68%) of advertisers plan to create ads specifically for these gadgets in the coming year.

A survey of 232 media agency and brand-side executives by MTM has found that 79% of advertisers and agencies believe reaching audiences through voice-activated devices in the next 12 months is key.

According to Global's digital audio exchange, DAX, who commissioned the study, brands have been able to target ads to voice-activated devices through its technology since November last year.

"We are now able to identify when people are streaming from voice-activated devices and target them. This could be particularly effective for FMCG brands as they can target consumers at relevant moments whether they’re at home or out and about," a spokesman for Global told Campaign.

Radio's move to voice is a growing trend with another study by Radiocentre finding that 70% of Echo device owners used their gadgets to listen to the Radio.

The UK’s radio and audio industries are joining forces to create a week long celebration. Radio Audio Week will take place 14-19 May 2018 and consist of a series of events including conferences, lectures, seminars, awards and networking events at different locations around London.

Radio Audio Week is a collaboration between Radiocentre and The Radio Academy, the membership organisation dedicated to the promotion, celebration and development of the UK radio and audio sector. There is also involvement from the non-commercial sector, with participation from the BBC.

The week will celebrate what is being hailed as “the audio revolution” which has seen record numbers of people listening to the radio, the coming of age of podcasts and streaming services, and – especially critical over the last 18 months – the launch and quick adoption of voice-activated devices.

The full list of events will be confirmed in due course but will include The Radio Academy’s annual Radio Festival on Tuesday 15 May and Radiocentre’s Tuning In conference on Wednesday 16 May, you can sign up for Tuning in here.

The IAB UK, the trade association for digital advertising, representing most of the UK’s leading brands, media owners, publishers and agencies, will also host its annual Sound Investment seminar during the same week. There will also be an IPA breakfast seminar where the trade body for marketing communications agencies will give a TouchPoints perspective on audio in people’s everyday lives. The week will wrap up with the ceremony for the British Podcast Awards on Saturday 19 May.

Radio Audio Week will also be used to raise awareness of mental health issues, both ensuring the positive mental health of those working in the industry but also exploring the important role that listening to radio can play in the lives of people suffering with mental health issues.

With in-article chat bots, BBC is experimenting with new ways to introduce readers to complex topics“For us, this is a way to let people read and ask questions at their own pace, instead of having them read through long screens of text. Often people aren’t engaged in stories because they haven’t had the right context.”

Radio network Westwood One wanted to get a sense of the return its advertisers were getting on their investments—it promised as much last fall, when it established ROI guarantees—so it partnered with Nielsen Catalina Solutions to determine how a product in the consumer-packaged-goods realm performed and found that radio delivered $12 in sales for every $1 spent on advertising.

“Westwood One has been very vocal that AM/FM radio delivers an impressive return on investment for brand marketers,” said Suzanne Grimes, evp of marketing at Cumulus Media and president at Westwood One. “Today, we back that statement. These findings show that a personal-care brand can use radio to realize impressive sales lift and a powerful return on ad spend.”

Music streaming service Deezer has announced it is now compatible with Amazon Alexa, meaning it can respond to voice commands via any Alexa-enabled device. With Alexa voice control being added as a new feature, Deezer will be available to listen to on Amazon Echo devices, Sonos One, UE Blast and Megablast speakers and any other speaker that supports Alexa voice control.

Alexa voice control is available to Deezer Premium+ subscribers, and all of the streaming services features are supported, including Flow, a continuous stream of music based, curated especially for you, based on your listening habits. You can also ask Alexa to tell you what a song is if you don't already have it in your library and ask her to play playlists depending on the mood you're in.

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